News and Analysis

Retailers Hoping for Record Cyber Monday to Follow Friday Windfall

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US retailers set all-time records on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, wracking up $11.6 billion in online sales. Adobe predicts that Cyber Monday will also set a fresh record of $9.4 billion, pushing the Thanksgiving weekend total to nearly $30 billion.

The increasing importance of online sales has forced traditional retailers to compete with e-commerce natives like Amazon not only by offering their own robust set of deals but also by investing in delivery infrastructure and reducing friction for consumers ordering online. 

Spa Facial

The Beauty Industry is Prepping for Small Business Saturday – Here’s How

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Small Business Saturday is one of the most important events of the year for local beauty and wellness providers. Spas and salons rely on sales of gift cards and beauty products to sustain their businesses during leaner times.

Developed by American Express in the depths of the recession in 2010, Small Business Saturday is placed in the middle of two of the biggest shopping events of the year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While proportionally fewer sales happen on Small Business Saturday than Black Friday or Cyber Monday, consumer awareness around the annual event is growing.

The Risks and Outsize Rewards of Political Branding

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In a time of unprecedented political partisanship, the risks and rewards of corporate political messaging are amplified. Viral marketing strategies including Nike’s partnership with racial justice activist and football star Colin Kaepernick, Gillette’s toxic masculinity ad, and Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ stances rally political sympathizers to a brand’s side and alienate ideological foes.

Street Fight checked in with Jen Capstraw, director of strategic insights and evangelism at growth marketing company Iterable, to get a sense of how significant the benefits and drawbacks of political branding are, which ideological direction political ads are predominantly taking, and how strong the evidence is for the efficacy of partisan messaging.

Commentary

What Will Amazon Do With Whole Foods?

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Whole Foods will represent a brand-new challenge to the company that has come to define online commerce. How can shopping in a physical store be disrupted and transformed by the same kind of thinking that created the world’s biggest virtual marketplace?

Why Location Visit Data Is Going to Be Huge for Brands

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If you are not already thinking about how visits data fits into your location strategy, or you’ve yet to bring the people in-house to support that strategy (think: data scientists), now is the time. this is going to be the biggest, most critical shift in the young history of location data markets.

New Street Fight Report: Selling to Local Merchants

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Street Fight’s latest report on local merchants is a companion piece to our annual survey of local small and medium-sized businesses, that focuses on vendor strategies for selling local marketing services and up-selling add-ons or suites of offerings.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Snapchat Gets Assist from Yext, What New Instagram Tools Mean for SMBs

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Geofilter Campaigns May Get a Boost from Yext… What the New Instagram Tools Mean for SMBs… Advertising in Pokémon Go Will Include Sponsored Products, Not Just Locations…

LMC Chief: Local News Pessimists Are Missing the Big Innovations

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Is the outlook for local digital news as gloomy as a spate of recent reports indicates? Or are the forecasters looking in the rear-view mirror? We spoke recently with Rusty Coats, executive director of the digitally focused Local Media Consortium, about why the prognosis for local media might not be as bad is it seems.

Why Local Businesses Should Embrace Google’s New Rich Answers

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If you’re concerned about attracting customers through SEO content, you likely have mixed feelings about the recent enhancements made by Google to improve user experience. But here are three ways that Rich Answers can actually improve the quality of your web traffic.

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Offers Brands Its Audience API, AirBnB Testing Local Commerce Bots

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Offers Audience API to All Brands… AirBnB is Working on Bots to Catalyze its Travelers’ Local Spending… Poking Around the Location Data Potential of Pokémon Go…

PlaceIQ Expands Location Data Network, Joining Oracle’s BlueKai Marketplace

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The company will make its audience targeting data available to Oracle’s brand and agency customers, allowing them to combine it with other first- and third-party data streams to build custom audiences to increase cross-channel marketing effectiveness.

Gimbal Launches Proximity Data Platform for Mobile App Publishers

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While more consumers own smartphones than ever before, they also face an unprecedented number of options when it comes to mobile apps. For app publishers, it can be hard to stand out in the crowd — even if your service is perfect for a a specific kind of user. As a way to help publishers […]

Street Fight Daily: Google Launches Retail Ad Update, Pokémon Go to Host Local Ads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Courts Retail and Hotel Marketers with New Features… Ads for Specific Locations Are Coming to Pokémon Go… Why Location Isn’t Enough for Mobile Advertising…

6 Ways That Local Merchants Are Using Pokémon Go to Drive Business

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With interest in the augmented reality game reaching a fever pitch this week, savvy local merchants and national retailers are using social media and targeted rewards to lure in Pokémon Go players and turn them into paying customers. Here are six examples of ways that merchants are doing that right now.

Foursquare President: ‘Huge’ Industry Developing Around Location Intelligence

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As the company maps consumers’ digital actions to where they are and what they do in the real-world, it is looking to become the “Nielsen of the real-world.” Street Fight recently spoke with Foursquare president Steven Rosenblatt about the explosion of location data, and why there is a big opportunity in connecting the dots between ads and store visits.

7 Platforms National Brands Can Use to Run Local Campaigns

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The biggest challenge for national marketers targeting local markets has traditionally been scale, but new hyperlocal solutions are making it easier for major brands to reach hundreds, or even thousands, of markets with individualized campaigns that can be generated with the click of a button.